We’re going to look at a second story from the Bible this week, this one about Jesus in Luke 9:57-60

57 As they were walking along the road, a man said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.”

58 Jesus replied, “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”

59 He said to another man, “Follow me.”

But he replied, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.”

60 Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”

Just like yesterday’s story, this is a tough one to interpret, since we probably didn’t expect this kind of response from Jesus.  It sounds to us like the man’s father just died, and Jesus says he can’t mourn.  He comes across as cold and even cruel, but mostly because we lack cultural understanding. There are again two possibilities for why he responds this way:

One option: The man’s father is actually dead, sometime in the recent past.  He’s been put in a very hot middle eastern tomb.  The son wants to wait up to a year, so he can go and place his father’s bones in a bone box, an ossuary, for secondary burial in a family tomb.  This would have been a very important duty for a Jewish son, but Jesus says it’s not as important as God’s kingdom.

Another option: This is a stall tactic.  The man’s father is not dead.  The son wants to wait until his father dies and leaves him the inheritance.  He only wants to follow Jesus when there will be no financial risk.

Following Jesus looks different today – it’s not as simple as joining his entourage on a dusty road.  It changes us in many other ways, and we’re going to explore lots of those changes in the next few weeks.

Either way, we’ll be tempted to delay.  We’ll want to put off financial changes until we retire, service changes until we have more time, and so on.  But Jesus’ response to this man should inform us that Jesus needs to be first in our daytimer.

Question: What aspect of following Jesus are you tempted to put off?

Read the Bible in Sync Today

Ryan Sim - November 13, 2013

Wednesday - Change It - God in Worship

Yesterday we defined worship as giving worth to God, or in other words, acknowledging he is at the center of our lives, or we want him there if he isn’t. Worship is about practicing God’s Presence. We can forget God is there in our busy lives, and something tangible can help. A friend of mine mentioned Elf on the Shelf on Facebook. Elf on the Shelf is a small elf doll that parents are supposed to hide somewhere in the house every night, claiming he is a “scout elf” who reports back to Santa. The elf becomes a visible symbol for small children who might forget that Santa is watching. Worship is meant to be a visible symbol for those of us who might forget God is watching. In the busyness of our everyday lives, we cannot always remember that God is with us. In spite of our best intentions we may find ourselves living and acting without regard to the fact that God is present in every aspect of our lives. Sometimes we think something in our lives is coincidence, but God is actually doing something incredible. Sometimes we will find resources are suddenly supplied that we needed, and will think it was luck or our skills, when it was in fact God’s provision. We want to develop an increasing sensitivity to God’s presence with us. We know that we develop skills and get better at things by practicing: an old saying reminds us practice makes perfect. It would be more truthful to say that practice reinforces, but in this case reinforcement is good enough. We need a way to reinforce our awareness of God’s presence in our lives. Question: When have you seen God working in the last week? What seeming coincidences were there? Reminder: Earlier in this series, we saw the importance of reading the Bible together in sync, so our new daily bible readings start today in our mobile app and web site.

Related Topics: God, Worship | More Messages from Ryan Sim | Download Audio

From Series: "Becoming Like Family"

This series looks at becoming “like family” with others learning to follow Jesus. We're exploring how the church is not a building, institution or event, but a community of people. It's important that explore what church means as we prepare to launch a new church in Ajax in 2014.

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